[Tasale, Exarch Station] Bad Medicine

Ana’s eyes bugged out slightly as she stared at everything but Shirin and the envirosuit for a moment. She accepted the hazmat materials with a vacant smile, and tossed the stylus to the side, scattering the remains of the white powder inside it aside.

“Awww yeah. Aww yeah. Aww yeah. You ready to do this? I am. I sooo am. Let’s get that mofo, you dig? Yeahhhhhh.”

There was a full three seconds that she spent looking vacantly at Shirin before suddenly tearing the suit on.

The security office was a dull affair, the sort of place where an overpaid and underutilized employee might spend hours on end staring at the many displays and camera feeds, ironically praying for one of the alarms to trigger just so there'd be something to do.

Thankfully, Jil'Korah was neither overpaid nor underutilized (nor an employee, but that particular thought didn't occur to him), and the office contained one panel that seemed to glow in the sickly lighting - the security control terminal. A direct route into the hospital's defenses, one with pre-authorized access to just a few more systems than a standard console, and one which wouldn't draw any attention by attempting to access classified information - security was expected to monitor such things. The quarian strode into the room, looked around for a minute to make sure there were no surprises waiting for him, then took a seat at the console and brought up his omnitool.

Okay, this is it. Let's see what they've got waiting for us.
Beginning attack.

When Ali arrives he is just in time to hear Ana's exclamation and see her vacant mind...

By the spirits...

"Thanks," he mutters as he suits up quickly, checking seals and all the usual stuff... "Okay ready to go. You two, keep the violence to a minimum... and Kirok use a pistol... no shotguns allowed, unless absolutely needed."

He stepped towards the lift, "just a quick and in-and-out... like with an asari wh..." he looked at Ana, "like that."

Kirok sneered, but he put away his shotgun. A pair of carnifexes (carnifexi?) appeared in his hands, plated in gold and shining like tacky death in his hands. It was amazing what you could get for a few credits on the black market these days.

"Pistol ain't gonna do much, Ali," Kirok drawled as he stepped forward, sliding down his helmet on his suit as he did so. "I ain't promisin' nothin' if shit turns crazy. Y'don't tell a thresher maw t'stop chargin' in... in mid... y'just don't."

He tensed at the door, a bundled-up ball of potential momentum.

"Whenever y'ready."

As the trio descended into quarantine storage, Shirin took up a spot at the security checkpoint and set to work...well, being a security guard.

Fortunately, the man she'd replaced had been logged into his workstation terminal, which in turn gave her basic network access - nothing beyond the basics, but that was what Jil was working on, so she wasn't too concerned...especially since those basics included a map. Behind her helmet's visor, the drell allowed herself a wry smile.

"All right. You're going to come out on Quarantine Level A. There's definitely going to be researchers down there and I'll bet security personnel as well, so try to be low-profile. Head to the left down the main corridor and past Active Containment, and there should be a back stairwell to take you down to Quarantine Level B. We'll be able to give you active updates once Jil's in the cameras, until then--"

A pair of technicians were approaching the checkpoint.

"Hang on, gotta play security guard."

The internal systems appear to be heavily customized.
Customized? To cut corners or by someone with actual skill?
Skill is relative.
By organic standards, please.
The responsible party possessed some talent by organic standards. By my estimate it would have taken you 15.23451 minutes to breach the network without my assistance.
And with your assistance?
The network has been successfully breached.

It was nice of Ensemble not to mention that it had taken him a little under six minutes to get into the systems. Or was it? Perhaps this was an embarrassing performance for a being composed of pure data? Probably not the time to press the issue.

"Okay, folks, we're in. Any special requests?"

Jil didn't actually wait for a reply, noting that there were technicians heading towards Shirin's position. A few taps of his fingers and a coolant tank sensor recorded a valve jammed open in an empty room on the far side of the hospital, a crisis oddly well-suited to the pair of techs headed their way. Exactly the sort of minor situation they might be called away to deal with in just a couple of minutes, since the task allocation VI seemed utterly convinced that no other techs were available.

Quam did a final check of his systems looked at Ana and Kirok and pushed the button, "Okay going down..."

Inside the lift the group was treated to a safety instruction video.
'Please make sure your seals are secured. Please make sure your mouth is open when you pass through the decontamination laser field.'

They went through the decontamination field, -Ali did indeed open his mouth as ordered by the instruction video- before stopping at Quarantine Level A.

"Okay... one final thing if anyone asks about Kirok... he's a specimen. Oh and don't shoot the active containment thingy... they might vent everything into space if that gets broken, or burn things away with plasma... you know how paranoid salarians can be about germs."

Kirok managed to blurt out "I'ma whut" as a trio of encounter suited salarian guards approached the team, vent seals slammed down hard against anything, weapons at the ready.

"Y'd better b'sure 'bout dis, Ali..."

Ana, for one, was trying to do her best about following instructions. It was becoming difficult to do so, though, when her entire field of view felt like it was being flattened vertically by a vice and her neck kept twitching from the little phantom ball of energy that kept pooling there. Thus, when she stumbled through the laser grid and bumped into Quam’s back at seeming double speed, the aforementioned security guards snapped their heads at them and began marching in their direction.

“SOOOOOOOMMMMETHIIIIIIINGGGG WROOOOOOONGGGGG WIIIITHHH HHHHHHEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR?” they asked, waving their weapons at her in super-slow motion.


”Whoops.”

Ali was looking at Kirok when the guards appeared... when Ana bumped into him and he almost stumbled...

"Hey would you watch out where..."

Those salarians had asked him something... he had to think fast.

"... eh no, well she's a human right? You know them all clumsy..." he chuckled, "we're delivering this specimen to Level B, he has... eh... a mutant variant of the genophage... or something ... it could affect more than just krogan now, last thing you want is nobody getting it up... well you guys never got it up I guess but you know what I mean..."

This was not going good but he persevered, the longer he talked to them the more chance Jil and Ensemble could give them the needed access credentials when the guards checked.

"She... eh is a human doctor that found him, we must make sure if you know it's not what she thinks it is otherwise... demographic disaster... anyway Jil.. I mean SecHQ will be able to send you the security clearance if you need it."

This, thankfully, was at least enough time for Ana to recompose herself. Her vision flashing back to normal in a manner similar to that of an old black-and-white television, she blinked once or twice and shoved past Ali to fix the situation herself.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” she began, adopting that slow, irritating tone of voice used universally by old ladies about to launch into their collection of cat pictures. “He’s new, you know, still a little we behind the ears—well, the horns, for you folks – but as he was so adorably saying, this wonderful little specimen –”

--she stroked Kirok on the shoulder—

“—he seems to have come down with a wonderfully interesting new disease, you see, Tuchankan virilis imperceptiblis, or as we like to call it…”

She bent forward and put a hand to the side of her mouth, so that Kirok couldn’t see what she was saying. She whispered the words:

“…Erectile dysfunction.”

"--but that tends to be how it goes," Shirin was saying up top. "You know the drill, boys; arms at your sides, step through the DNA scanner, and then we're good to go."

The asari was halfway through the scanner when Jil's work order came through, and the salarian waved her back. "Actually, wait. Looks like we've got a coolant jam in east intensive care."

"They do know we're busy, right?" asked the annoyed asari. "That breach in QA isn't going to fix itself."

"Go figure. It's easier for the people I don't have to go, I guess." Stepping back to let the asari go, Shirin shrugged. "See you round, I guess."

As the two disappeared around the corner, she turned back to the terminal.

"Assuming that was you, Jil, thanks. All right, for the rest of you, if you have to kill them, try not to do any shooting. Stray rounds down there could result in some problems for us, and the KSK rep was pretty specific about not wanting a biohazard outbreak. Uh, trying to track down the haul. You're looking for 'chimeric histoplasma cardiophagia'." I can't find a specific location yet, outside of 'Quarantine Level B.'"

A pause.

"This should go without saying, but make sure it's contained when you take it out. It does some unfortunate things to people."

Somewhere in Kirok's subconscious, a dial pushed one inch closer to "Kill Anna."

"Yeah. I is very sick. Cough cough. Sometimes I git dese murd'rous rages I just can't repress."

The krogan glared at Ana Sari, promising all sorts of flavors of vengeance.

Ana, meanwhile, fought valiantly to ignore the image her retinas were showing her and continued to maintain the façade.

“Oh, it’s all right, dear, overcompensation is perfectly natural in other species. Now let’s get you downstairs before you have any more bloodrage attacks – that is, unless these two have any—”

“Will you SHUT UP already?!”

One of the two salarians, having wasted forty-five seconds of his life listening to these three idiots, waved his gun and clutched his forehead in anger.

“I don’t. Care, Dr. Cartier,” he muttered angrily, glaring at the credentials hanging around her neck behind the facemask. “I just came over here to get your damn ‘tool swapped, not to hear every damn report about what you’re doing ‘downstairs.’”

He fished around in a pocket and pulled out a datapad, thrusting it in front of her impatiently as the other salarian simply shook his head.

“Just swipe and go already, Doctor. I swear, none of you humans understand OpSec these days.”

"I didn't know that krogan ... problems fell under opsec," he glanced at Kirok, "on the other hand there's bedside manners."

Internal monologue; By the spirits let Jil have arranged for clearance... or we're all screwed...

Through the strange mists that had engulfed his existence, Cerastes heard a voice. At first, it was lulling; a soothing, feminine murmur, distant and indecipherable. Its foreignness brought about it a certain sense of calm, one that was interrupted as it drifted a few feet away and abruptly changed tone entirely.

Suddenly, the voice was shrill. It roused the drell from his slumber. A pair of red eyes slid open as his head fell to the side to stare out the doorway.

"What the hell - is that cocaine? Ugh, Amy, not again! I swear, she is so fired..."

Why was there yelling? There shouldn't have been any yelling, not yet. He knew that Shirin was here, he knew that her band was here, but they were professionals, and...

Wait.

The asari. The goddamned asari.

Cerastes quickly flopped an arm to the side of the gurney and pressed down on the red emergency button, then started to wheeze heavily, faking the on-comings of a panic attack. The source of the voice cursed and ran to his side, the pile of white dust on the floor forgotten as the nurse struggled to soothe a species she'd never encountered before.

Jil had, of course, arranged clearance - it had been among the first things he'd done once Ensemble had gained access to the systems.

Unfortunately, determining exactly what level of access was required for the quarantine labs was somewhat harder than granting the access itself, thanks to a peculiar quirk in the way they'd obtained their information combined with the system's highly customized nature. It hadn't proven timely to try and grant access specific to the section or canister the group needed, so Jil's hasty solution had been to simply grant access to everything - much more than any single guard, doctor, or especially specimen would ever have, let alone a trio that happened to be traveling together. There wasn't much to be done for that, though, except hope the scanners checked only for a specific access level rather than displaying an overall access level...

Oh, hey, Ensemble, did you remember to wipe the cameras?
My memory is flawless.
Okay. So you wiped the cameras?
No.
So you forgot?
I am incapable of forgetting.
Of course, but you haven't done it yet?
Correct.
Good. Don't forget.
This conversation is inefficient.

The quarian couldn't disguise a snicker, even though he knew the geth would hear it. This really wasn't poor Ensemble's day.

"Alright, we should be mostly in the clear now? I'm trying to isolate the specific strain we're after, but that particular subsystem is putting up a fight. Standby."

Back on the main floor, Shirin was doing her temporary 'job' and checking the credentials of a researcher. "All right, you're punched in. Have a good one."

Oh, great. A volus was approaching, and this one had a security escort; that meant he probably wasn't just an IT drone or a researcher. Administration, maybe. Best behavior for this one - arousing suspicion would lead to disaster, and unlike some token office worker, she couldn't just quietly hit the volus and his guard over the head and stash them somewhere out-of-the-way: they'd be missed, for sure.

"Heads up, VIP incoming," she said into the comm. "I'll be unavailable for a minute while I deal with this." Turning, the drell raised a hand. "Gentlemen. Can I see some ID?"

"Certainly," wheezed the volus, displaying a temporary-authorization holo badge. "I have a consulting appointment in Quarantine B, infectious substance section."

Ah, he wasn't an employee - that explained the visitor badge and the escort. Shirin nodded. "All right. Step through the scanner and you're good to go."

The guard tilted his head. "You new? I don't recognize your voice."

"Talia Kol, night shift. It's a busy time of year, so I'm pulling down some overtime pay."

"Ah."

As the two made for the elevator, she considered the situation. "I'm hoping the three of you haven't destroyed anything yet, because we might've just gotten a lucky break. There's a volus headed down to QB; he's apparently needed in infectious substances. If you can follow him in, you might be able to find the haul."

The warning crackled in Ana’s earpiece just as the salarian’s datapad blinked red. Looking at it, he sniffed and put away his weapon long enough to slide a few controls around. “Yeah, okay, good,” he muttered, sliding it away. “You folks have a nice day.”

His voice had the same inflection you’d use saying “FALL DOWN AND DIE. HORRIBLY.” This is probably why, when they were walking away, Ana overheard his cohort whispering to him “he’s right, you know. It’s not like we’re doing R&D on biological pathogens for Reaper—“

“SHHHH!”

Ana suddenly felt light-headed. She really shouldn’t have skimped on that hit. She put a finger to the side of her hazmat helmet and muttered “Uh, yeah! Copy,” then looked at Quam blearily.

yes, Yes, YES they were going to make it through without any shooting, Ali could bump foreheads with the quarian for second, the guy really came through for them...

Then Shirin informed them about the impending visit from the VIP, a complication or an opportunity but ultimately it should be manageable. He looked back at Ana and saw her eyes… that couldn’t be good.

"You alright?" he asked over a tight-beam transmission, "you look tired."